Boys of Summer

    (Tokyopop, 2006)
™ and © 2006 Chuck Austen and TOKYOPOP Inc.

America’s pastime is either baseball or babe-watching, especially for a horny college freshman like Bud Waterston. He hopes to have the best of both worlds, when he and his pal Manny join a coed dorm at Wilten State University, where girls go wild.

But his eyes may be bigger than his mouth, when on the diamond he bumps into Chrissie, whom he ogled back home on the tennis court. Though he has a fastball, Bud’s been thrown a curve by a gal who has assets in more ways than one. Can he and Manny make the team as battery mates, when her dad is the coach and Chrissie the designated catcher?

Another entry in the oxymoronic category of American manga, writer Chuck Austen indulges in laddie-magazine humor and artist Hiroki Otsuka in Hooters-style fan service in a title aimed at adolescent boys who steal peeks at their father’s Playboys. In producing a spring-break Mr. Baseball, the creators concoct a crude American-Japanese fantasy where sex-starved boys can literally and figuratively round the bases for the ultimate score.

— Oliver Chin
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